Comparison To Efforts By Individuals
As of the end of 2007, thanks to the constant decline in memory prices, the ready availability of multi-core 64-bit computers, and the availability of the efficient sieving code (developed by Thorsten Kleinjung of the Bonn group) via ggnfs and of robust open-source software such as msieve for the finishing stages, special-form numbers of up to 750 bits and general-form numbers of up to about 520 bits can be factored in a few months on a few PCs by a single person without any special mathematical experience. These bounds increase to about 950 and 600 if it were possible to secure the collaboration of a few dozen PCs for sieving; currently the amount of memory and the CPU power of a single machine for the finishing stage are equal barriers to progress.
In 2009, Benjamin Moody factored a 512-bit RSA key used to sign the TI-83 graphing calculator using software found on the internet; this eventually led to the Texas Instruments signing key controversy.
Read more about this topic: Integer Factorization Records
Famous quotes containing the words comparison, efforts and/or individuals:
“Intolerance respecting other people’s religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people’s art.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I have sought his aid—but if after endeavoring to do my best in the light which he affords me, I find my efforts fail, I must believe that for some purpose unknown to me, He wills it otherwise.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“[Government’s] true strength consists in leaving individuals and states as much as possible to themselves—in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence, not in its control, but in its protection, not in binding the states more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)